Cap and Trade Will Lead to Capital Flight - by Ron Paul

In
my last column, I joked that with public spending out of control and
the piling on of the international bailout bill, economic collapse
seems to be the goal of Congress. It is getting
harder to joke about such a thing however, as the non-partisan General
Accounting Office (GAO) has estimated that the administration’s health
care plan would actually cost over a trillion dollars. This
reality check may have given us a temporary reprieve on this particular
disastrous policy, however an equally disastrous energy policy reared
its ugly head on Capitol Hill last week.

The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was voted on last Friday. Proponents claim this bill will help the environment, but what it really does is put another nail in the economy’s coffin. The
idea is to establish a national level of carbon dioxide emissions, and
sell pollution permits to industry as the Catholic Church used to sell
indulgences to sinners. HR 2454 also gives
federal bureaucrats new power to regulate a wide variety of household
appliances, such as light bulbs and refrigerators, and further distorts
the market by providing more of your tax money to auto companies.

The administration has pointed to Spain as a shining example of this type of progressive energy policy. Spain
has been massively diverting capital from the private sector into
politically favored environmental projects for the better part of a
decade, and many in Washington apparently like what they see. However,
under no circumstances should anyone serious about economic recovery
emulate an economy that is now approaching 20 percent unemployment,
where every green job created, eliminated 2.2 real jobs and cost around
$800,000 each!

The
real inconvenient truth is that the cost of government regulations,
taxes, fees, red tape and bureaucracy is a considerable expense that
has to be considered when companies decide where to do business and how
many people they can afford to hire. Increasing governmental burden directly causes capital flight and job losses, as Spain has learned. In
this global economy its easy enough for businesses to relocate to
countries that are more politically friendly to economic growth. If our government continues to kick the economy while its down, it will be a long time before it gets back up. In fact, jobs are much more likely to go overseas, compounding our problems.

And for what? Contrary
to claims repeated over and over, there is no consensus in the
scientific community that global warming is getting worse or that it is
manmade. In fact over 30,000 scientists signed a petition recently directly disputing the claims on which this policy is based. Legitimate environmental claims should instead be directed towards the public sector. The government, especially the military, is the most serious polluter in the country, and is exempt from most EPA regulations. Meanwhile
Washington bureaucrats have classified the very air we exhale as a
pollutant and have gone unchallenged in this incredible assertion. The
logical consequence is that there will come a time when we will have to
buy a government permit just to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
from our own lungs!

The
events on Capitol Hill last week just demonstrate Washington’s audacity
in manufacturing problems just so they can expand government power to
solve them.